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EAf 7th Annual Community of Practice Meeting

Monday, May 4, 2015 to Friday, May 8, 2015

Entebbe, Uganda

The CCRP held its seventh annual Community of Practice (CoP7) meeting for the Eastern Africa region May 4 – 8 at the Imperial Botanical Hotel in Entebbe, Uganda. The main objectives were to share project and program progress updates, deepen understanding and skills for participatory research and effective working with farmers, and facilitate cross-project learning and interaction. Following feedback from previous CCRP events, the CoP7 adopted a unique structure that entailed providing more time and space for poster and oral presentations, using more interactive visual materials, and inviting farmer representatives to share their perspectives. The poster approach allowed participants to learn more about projects than would have been possible from PowerPoint presentations, By contrast, the gallery walks energized participants and ensured their maximum concentration. The presence of the farmer representative brought an opportunity to focus the research projects and contextualize them within farmers’ priorities and perspectives.

Outputs:

Participants were enlightened on the need for integrating important CCRP elements into research design and implementation, systems thinking, AEI, working with farmers, and heterogeneity.

Projects were encouraged to adopt co-presentation and joint decision-making approaches between their team’s principal investigators, scientists, and students to ensure shared responsibility and professional growth of all members.

Projects that expressed interest in working with the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) team received help improving the mapping and other spatial aspects of their research processes.

Discussions on farmers’ priorities, challenges, and opportunities revealed that what farmers are looking for from research and extension are demand-driven technologies that are generated in an inclusive process and fit diverse farm conditions. It was also emphasized that linking farmer groups to markets would increase the affordability for sustainability of adoption and continued use of the technologies

Emphasis was placed on the value of understanding power dynamics and gender relations to enhance farmers’ participation in research and extension.

The oral and poster presentations were evaluated and prizes awarded to the best as a way of encouraging participants to improve quality of work presented.

Workshop evaluations showed that participants felt that, compared to previous events, there were high levels of interaction, learning, and networking.